Morgan ‘wrongly’ said article was inaccurate

Dundalk Town Councillor Oliver Morgan has explained why he ‘wrongly’ told a local radio show host that the article which appeared in last week’s Dundalk Democrat in relation to the alleged hacking of his Facebook account was inaccurate.

Cllr Morgan now agrees that the Dundalk Democrat accurately reported a telephone interview he gave to this newspaper last Monday 24 February.

In last week’s Democrat, Cllr Morgan alleged that two friends had played a prank on him which led to the publication of an explicit video through his Facebook account.

In an interview on the Michael Reade Show on LMFM on Tuesday morning last, Cllr Morgan said the report in this paper was inaccurate.

Cllr Morgan issued a lengthy statement on Monday of this week which clarified his position on the matter.

“At 9.30am on Tuesday 25 February I was interviewed live on The Michael Reade Show by Michael Reade, “ Cllr Morgan states.

“At that stage, being under the impression, that my two friends had committed a criminal offence by uploading the masturbation video to my page, and being fearful of them being punished for the offence, I very wrongly told Michael that Ian Cameron’s report in the Democrat newspaper had been inaccurate.”

Cllr Morgan states that on Wednesday 19 February, he was entertaining two friends in their 30’s in his house.

He explained that they were having a few drinks and he left the room for a short time to go to the bathroom. When he returned he quickly realised his friends had posted an explicit video to his personal facebook page.

“I immediately removed the video from my facebook page. I realised the silliness and seriousness of what my pals had just done and I scolded them and put them out of my home.”

Cllr Morgan went on to say: “I did not realise that someone had spotted the masturbation video on my facebook page and posted it to “Dundalk Friends photo and craic”, a page to which I have never posted anything since its inception.”

Cllr Morgan said he was taken by surprise when the Democrat contacted him on Monday to say that the video had been posted on the Dundalk Friends, Photo and Craic Facebook page.

“This was actually the first I had heard of the posting to this page and I was shocked and horrified,” Cllr Morgan said.

“I considered and discussed this startling information with Ian and told him what I thought had probably happened, about my two friends, the tittering and giggling and what they had done and Ian subsequently accurately reported the burden of our discussion in the Democrat,” he stated.

Cllr Morgan went on to say that he has not spoken to the two friends who allegedly carried out the joke.

“However, on having reflected deeply on the whole saga ever since, I consider that what they did to me was a silly, infantile prank and that nothing would be further from their minds than to damage me in any way either personally or politically.

“ However, the same cannot be said from whatever social media predator seized the opportunity to cause me very very grievous personal and political harm by seizing the extremely short-lived opportunity to send the masturbation video “viral”.”

Cllr Morgan said that the had considered pulling out of political life as a result of this incident but he has since changed his mind.

“When I was in the pits of despair in respect of this regrettable saga and having “been there” before I actually decided in the aftermath of the Michael Reade interview to “pull out” of political life altogether but, fortunately, I am surrounded by a group of good friends who wouldn’t hear of it and my hat is still, very much, “in the ring”,” he said in his statement.

This website and its associated newspaper are full participating members of the Press Council of Ireland and supports the Office of the Press Ombudsman. This scheme in addition to defending the freedom of the press, offers readers a quick, fair and free method of dealing with complaints that they may have in relation to articles that appear on our pages. To contact the Office of the Press Ombudsman go towww.pressombudsman.ie or www.presscouncil.ie

Dundalk Democrat provides news, events and sport features from the Dundalk area. For the best up to date information relating to Dundalk and the surrounding areas visit us at Dundalk Democrat regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Dundalk Democrat requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.